Between Death and Rebirth

Schmidt Number: S-2729

On-line since: 15th February, 1005

LECTURE NINE

At
the time when materialism — mainly theoretical materialism —
was in its prime, in the middle and still to some extent during the
last decades of the nineteenth century, when the writings of Buchner
and Vogt (‘bulky Vogt’ as he used to be called) had
made a deep impression upon people who considered themselves
enlightened, one could often hear a way of speaking that is
occasionally also heard today, because stragglers from that epoch of
theoretical materialism are still to be found in certain circles.
When people do not flatly deny the possibility of a life after death,
or even here and there admit it, they are wont to say: Well, there
may be a life after death but why should we trouble about it during
life on Earth? When death has taken place we shall discover whether
there is indeed a future life, and meanwhile if here on Earth we
concern ourselves only with the affairs of earthly existence and take
no account of what is alleged to come afterwards, we cannot miss
anything of importance. For if the life after death has anything to
offer we shall then discover what it is!

As I said, this way of speaking could be heard time and
time again and this is still the case in wide circles today; in the
way the subject is expressed it may often, in a certain respect,
almost seem acceptable. And yet it is utterly at variance with what
is disclosed to spiritual investigation when the facts connected with
the life between death and rebirth are considered in their spiritual
aspect. When a man has passed through the gate of death he comes into
contact with many and infinitely varied forces and beings. He does
not only find himself living amid a multitude of super-sensible facts
but he comes into contact with definite forces and Beings —
namely, the Beings of the several higher Hierarchies. Let us ask
ourselves what this contact signifies for one who is passing through
the period of existence between death and the new birth.

We know that when an individual has spent this period of
life in the super-sensible world and passes into physical existence
again through birth, he becomes in a certain way the moulder of his
own bodily constitution, indeed of his whole destiny in the life on
Earth. Within certain limits the human being builds and fashions his
body, even the very convolutions of his brain, by means of the forces
brought with him from the spiritual worlds when he enters again into
physical existence through birth. Our whole earthly existence depends
upon our physical body possessing organs which enable us to come in
touch with the outer physical world, to act and moreover to think in
that world.

If, here in the physical world, we do not possess the
appropriately formed brain which, on passing through birth we formed
for ourselves out of the forces of the super-sensible world, we remain
unable to cope with life in this physical world. In the real sense we
are fitted for life in the physical world only when we bring with us
from the spiritual world forces by means of which we have been able
to build a body able to cope with this world and all its demands. The
super-sensible forces which man needs in order to fashion his body and
also his destiny are received by him from the Beings of the higher
Hierarchies with whom he has made contact between death and the new
birth. What we need for the shaping of our life must be acquired
during the time that has preceded our birth since the last death.
Between death and the next birth we must approach, stage by stage,
the Beings who can endow us with the forces we need for our physical
existence.

In the life between death and rebirth we can pass before
the Beings of the higher Hierarchies in two ways. We may recognise
them, understand their nature and essential characteristics, be able
to receive what they can give us and what we shall need in the
following life. We must be able to understand or at least to perceive
what is being offered us and what we shall subsequently need. But we
might also pass before these Beings in such a way that, figuratively
speaking, their hands are offering gifts which we do not receive
because it is dark in the higher world in which we then live. Thus we
may pass through that world with understanding, with awareness of
what these Beings are offering us, or we may pass through it without
understanding, unaware of what they wish to bestow. Now the way in
which we pass through this spiritual world, which of the two ways we
necessarily choose in our life between death and the new birth, is
predetermined by the after-effects of the previous life and of
earlier lives on Earth. A person whose attitude in his last life on
Earth was unresponsive and antagonistic to all thoughts and ideas
that may enlighten him about the super-sensible world — such a
person passes through the life between death and rebirth as if
through a world of darkness. For the light, the spiritual light we
need in order to realise how these different Beings approach us and
what gifts we may receive from them for our next life on Earth —
the light of understanding for what is here coming to pass cannot be
acquired in the super-sensible world itself; it must be acquired here,
during physical incarnation on Earth. If, at death, we bear with us
into the spiritual life no relevant ideas and concepts, we shall pass
unknowingly through our super-sensible existence until the next birth,
receiving none of the forces needed for the next life. From this we
realise how impossible it is to say that we can wait until death
itself occurs because we shall then discover what the facts are —
whether indeed we shall encounter any reality at all after death. Our
relationship to that reality depends upon whether in earthly life we
have been receptive or antagonistic in our souls to concepts or ideas
of the super-sensible world that have been accessible to us and will
be the light through which we must ourselves illumine the path
between death and rebirth.

Something further can be gathered from what has been
said. The belief that we have, so to say, only to die in order to
receive everything that the super-sensible world can give us, even if
we have made no preparation for it — this belief is utterly
false. Every world has its own special mission. And what a man can
acquire during an incarnation on Earth he can acquire in no single
one of the other worlds. Between death and the new birth he is able,
in all circumstances, to enter into communion with the Beings of the
higher Hierarchies. But in order to receive their gifts, to avoid
having to grope in darkness through life there or in fearful
loneliness, in order to establish contact with those Beings and
receive their forces, the ideas and concepts which are the light
enabling the higher Hierarchies to be visible to the soul must be
acquired in earthly life. And so an individual who in earthly life
during the present cycle of time has rejected all spiritual ideas,
passes through the life between death and rebirth in fearful
loneliness, groping in darkness. In the next incarnation he will fail
to bring with him the forces wherewith to build his body efficiently
and mould his organs; he can fashion them in an imperfect form only
and consequently he will be an inadequate human being in his next
life.

We
realise from this how Karma works over from one life to the next. In
one life a man deliberately scorns to develop in his soul any
relationship with the spiritual worlds; in the next life he has no
forces wherewith to create even the organs enabling him to think,
feel or will the truths of spiritual life. He remains dull and
indifferent to spiritual things and spiritual life passes him by as
though in dream — as is so frequently the case today. On the
Earth such an individual can take no interest in spiritual worlds;
and his soul, after passing through the gate of death, is an easy
prey for the Luciferic powers. Lucifer makes straight for such souls.
Here we have the strange situation that in the next life in the
spiritual world, the life that follows the dull, unreceptive one, the
deeds and the Beings of the higher Hierarchies are indeed illumined
for such an individual but in this case not as a result of
what he acquired in earthly life but by the light which Lucifer sends
into his soul. It is Lucifer who illumines the higher worlds for him
when he passes into the life between death and rebirth. Now, he can,
it is true, perceive the higher Hierarchies, recognise when they are
offering their gifts to him. But the fact that Lucifer has tainted
the light means that all the gifts have a particular colouring and
character. The forces of the higher Hierarchies are then not exactly
as the human being could otherwise have received them. Their nature
then is such that when the human being passes into his next life on
Earth he can certainly form and mould his body, but he moulds it then
in such a way that although he becomes an individual who is,
admittedly, able to cope with the outer world and its demands, in a
certain respect he is inwardly inadequate, because his soul is tinged
with Lucifer's gifts or at least by gifts that have a Luciferic
trend.

When we come across individuals who have worked on their
bodies in such a way that they are able to make effective use of
their intellect and acquire certain skills which will help them to
raise their status in the world, although to their own advantage
only, snatching at what is in their own interest, dryly calculating
what is beneficial to themselves without any consideration for others
— and there are many such people nowadays — in these
cases the seer will very often find that their previous history was
what has been described. Before they began to display their dry,
intellectual, sharp-witted character in life, they had been led
through their existence between death and rebirth by Luciferic beings
who were able to approach them because in the preceding incarnation
they had lived an apathetic, dreamy existence. But these traits
themselves had been acquired because such individuals had passed
through an earlier existence between death and rebirth groping in
darkness. The Spirits of the higher Hierarchies would have bestowed
upon them the forces needed for fashioning a new life, but they were
unable to receive these forces; and that in turn was because they had
deliberately refused to concern themselves with ideas and concepts
relating to a spiritual world. That is the karmic connection. Such
examples do certainly occur; they appear before the eyes of spirit
only too frequently when with the help of powers of spiritual
investigation and knowing the conditions of human life, we penetrate
into higher worlds.

It is therefore wrong to say that here on Earth we need
concern ourselves only with what is around us in earthly existence
because what comes later will be revealed in all good time. But the
form in which it will be revealed depends entirely upon how we have
prepared ourselves for it here.

Another possibility may occur. I am saying these things
in order that by understanding the life between death and rebirth,
life between birth and death may become more and more intelligible.

When
we study life on Earth with discernment, we see many human beings —
and in our time they are very numerous — who can, as it were,
only ‘half think’, whose logic invariably breaks down
when faced with reality. Here is an example: A certain free-thinking
cleric, an honourable man in all his endeavours, wrote in the first
Freethinkers' Calendar as follows: Children ought not
to be taught any ideas about religion for that would be against
nature. If children are allowed to grow up without having any ideas
about religion pumped into them, we find that they do not of
themselves arrive at ideas of God, immortality, and so forth. The
inference to be drawn from this is that such ideas are unnatural to
the human being and should not be drummed into him; he should work
only with what can be drawn from his own soul. As in many other
cases, there are thousands and thousands of people nowadays to whom
an utterance such as this seems very clever, very subtle. But if only
genuine logic were applied the following would be obvious: If we were
to take a human being before he has learnt to speak, put him on a
lonely island and take care that he can hear no single word of
speech, he would never learn to speak. And so anyone who argues
against children being taught any ideas about religion would
logically have to say that human beings should not have to learn to
speak, for speech does not come of itself. So our free-thinking
cleric cannot propagate his ideas by means of his logic, for both he
and his logic come to a halt when confronted by the facts. His logic
can be applied to a small area only, and he does not notice that his
idea, assuming one can get hold of it, cancels itself out.

Anyone who is alert to his surroundings will find that
this inadequate, pseudo-thinking is very widespread. If with the help
of super-sensible research we trace the path of such an individual
backwards and come to the regions through which his soul passed
between the last death and the last birth, when this illogical
mentality was caused, the seer often finds that this type of human
being, in his last life between death and rebirth, passed through the
spiritual world in such a way that he encountered the spiritual
Beings and forces while under the guidance of Ahriman; and that
although those Beings would have bestowed upon him what he needed in
life, they could not make it possible for him to develop the capacity
for sound thinking. Ahriman was his leader and it was Ahriman who
contrived that the gifts of the Beings of the higher Hierarchies
could only be received by him in a form that would finally result in
his thinking coming to a halt when confronting actual facts, and in
his inability to make his thinking exhaustive and valid. A large
proportion of those human beings — and their number is legion —
who are incapable of genuine thinking today owe this to the fact that
in their last life between death and rebirth they were obliged to
submit to Ahriman's guidance; they had somehow prepared themselves
for this in their last earthly life — that is to say, in the
incarnation preceding the present one.

And what was the course of that preceding life as viewed
by a seer? It is found that these were morose, hypochondriacal
individuals, who shied away from facts and people in the world and
always found it difficult to establish any relation with their
environment. Very often they were intolerable hypochondriacs in their
previous life; on medical examination they would have been found to
be suffering from the type of illness occurring very frequently in
hypochondriacs. And if we were to go still further back, to the life
between death and rebirth that preceded the hypochondriacal
incarnation, we should find that during that period such human beings
were obliged again to forego the right guidance and could not become
truly aware of what the gifts of the higher Hierarchies would have
been. And how had they prepared themselves for this fate in the life
preceding the last two incarnations? We should find that they had
developed what it is certainly true to call a religious, pious
attitude of soul but an attitude based on sheer egoism. They were
people with a pious, even mystical nature emanating from egoism.
After all, mysticism very often has its origin in egoism. An
individual of this type might say: I seek within myself in order that
there I may recognise God. But what he is seeking there is only his
own self made into God! In the case of many pious souls it becomes
evident that they are pious only in order that after death one or
another of their spiritual inclinations may bear fruit. All that they
have acquired is an egotistic attitude of soul.

When in the course of spiritual research we trace the
sequence of three such earthly lives, we find that in the first, the
basic attitude of the soul was that of egotistic mysticism, egotistic
religiosity. And when today we observe human beings with this
attitude to life, we shall be able, by means of spiritual
investigation to trace them back to times when souls without number
developed a religious frame of mind out of sheer egoism. They then
passed through an existence between death and rebirth without being
able to receive from the spiritual Beings the gifts which would have
enabled them to shape their next life rightly. In that life they
became morose and hypochondriacal, finding everything distasteful.
This life again prepared them for the ensuing one when, having passed
through the gate of death, Ahriman and his hosts became their leaders
and the forces with which they were imbued manifested in the
following earthly life as defective logic, as an obtuse, undiscerning
kind of thinking.

Here, then, we have another example of three successive
incarnations. And we realise again and again what nonsense it is to
believe that we can wait until death to establish connection with the
super-sensible world. For how this connection is established after
death depends upon the inner tendencies of soul acquired here on
Earth towards the super-sensible world. Not only are the successive
earthly lives connected as causes and effects, but the lives between
death and the new birth are also connected in a certain way as causes
and effects. This can be seen from the following.

When
the seer directs his gaze into the super-sensible world where souls
are sojourning after death, he will find among them those who during
part of this life between death and rebirth are servants of those
Powers whom we may call the Lords of all healthy, budding and
burgeoning life on the Earth. (In the very lengthy period between
death and rebirth, innumerable experiences are undergone and in
accounts of the present kind, parts only can be described.) Among the
dead we find souls who for a certain length of time in the
super-sensible world co-operate in the wonderful task — for
wonderful it is — of pouring, infusing into the physical world
everything that can further the health of beings on the Earth, can
help them to thrive and blossom. Just as in certain circumstances we
can become servants of the evil spirits of illness and misfortune, so
too we can become the servants of those spiritual beings who promote
health and growth, who send down from the spiritual world into our
physical world forces that help life to flourish. It is nothing but a
materialistic superstition to believe that physical hygiene and
external regulations are the sole means of promoting health.
Everything that happens in physical life is directed by the beings
and powers of higher worlds who are all the time pouring into the
physical world forces which in a certain way work freely, upon human
or other beings, either promoting or harming health and growth.
Certain specific spiritual powers and beings are responsible for
these processes in health and illness. In the life between death and
rebirth man co-operates with these powers; and if we have prepared
ourselves in the right way we can experience the bliss of
co-operating in the task of sending the forces which promote health
and growth, from the higher worlds into this physical world. And when
the seer enquires into why such souls have deserved this destiny, he
becomes aware that in physical life on Earth there are two ways in
which human beings can execute and think about what they want to
achieve.

Let us take a general look at life. We see numbers of
human beings who carry out the work prescribed for them by their
profession or office. Even if there is no radical case of any one of
these people regarding their work as if they were animals being led
to the slaughterhouse, it is at least true to say that they work
because they are obliged to. Of course they would never neglect their
duty — although of course anything may happen! In a certain
sense it cannot be otherwise in the present phase of man's evolution;
the only urge such people feel towards their work is that of duty.
This does not by any means suggest that such work should be
criticised root and branch. It should not be understood in this
sense. Earth-evolution is such that this aspect of life will become
more and more widespread; nor will things improve in the future. The
tasks that men will have to carry out will become increasingly
complicated in so far as they are connected with outer life and men
will be condemned more and more to think and do only that to which
duty drives them. Already there are hosts of human beings who do
their work only because duty forces them to it, but on the other hand
there will be people who look for a Society such as ours in which
they can also achieve something, not simply from a sense of duty as
in everyday life but for which they feel enthusiasm and devotion.
Thus there are two aspects of a man's work: has it been thought out
or done as an outer achievement merely from a sense of duty, or has
it been done with enthusiasm and inner devotion, solely out of an
inner urge of his own soul? This attitude — to think and act
not merely out of a sense of duty, but out of love, inclination and
devotion — this prepared the soul to become a server of the
beneficent Powers of health and salutary forces sent down from the
super-sensible world into our physical world, to become a servant of
everything that brings health and to experience the bliss that can
accompany these circumstances.

To know this is extremely important for the general
well-being of man, for only by acquiring during life the forces that
will enable him to co-operate with the Powers in question will he be
able to work spiritually for an ever intensifying process of healing
and betterment of conditions on the Earth.

We will now consider still another case, of one who
makes efforts to adapt himself to his environment and its demands.
This by no means applies to everybody. There are some people who take
no trouble to adjust themselves to the world and are never at home
with the conditions either of spiritual or outer physical life. For
example, there are individuals who notice an announcement that here
or there an anthroposophical lecture will be given; they go to the
place but almost as soon as they get seated, they are already asleep!
In such cases the soul cannot adapt itself to the environment is not
attuned to it. I have known men who cannot even sew on a button to
replace one that has been torn off; that again means that they cannot
adapt themselves to physical conditions. Countless cases could be
quoted of people who cannot or will not adapt themselves to life.
These symptoms are very significant, as I have said. At the moment,
however, we will think only of the effects upon the life between
death and rebirth.

Everything becomes cause and everything produces
effects. A man who makes efforts to adapt himself to his environment,
someone, that is to say, who can actually sew on a button or can
listen to something with which he is unfamiliar without immediately
falling asleep, is preparing himself to become, after death, a helper
of those Spirits who further the progress of humanity and send down
to the Earth the spiritual forces which promote life as it advances
from epoch to epoch. After death we can experience the bliss of
looking down upon earthly life and co-operating with the forces that
are perpetually being sent to the Earth to further its progress, but
this is possible only if we endeavour to adapt ourselves to our
environment and its conditions. To be rightly and thoroughly
understood Karma must be studied in details, in details which reveal
the manifold ways in which causes and effects are connected here in
the physical world, in the spiritual world and in existence as a
whole.

Here again light is thrown upon the fact that our life
in the spiritual worlds depends upon the mode of our life in the
physical body. Each world has its own specific mission; no two worlds
have an identical mission. The characteristic phenomena and
experiences in one world are not the same in another. And if, for
example, a being is meant to assimilate certain things on Earth, it
is on Earth that he must do so; if he misses this opportunity he
cannot acquire them in some other world. This is particularly the
case in a matter which we have already considered but of which it
will be well to be thoroughly aware. The matter in question concerns
the acceptance of certain concepts and ideas needed by man for his
life as a whole. Let us take an example that is near at hand.
Anthroposophy is a timely and active force in our epoch. People
approach and accept Anthroposophy during their life on Earth in the
way known to you, but again the belief might arise that it is not
necessary to cultivate Anthroposophy on Earth, for one will be in a
position after death to know how things are in the spiritual worlds;
that moreover the higher Hierarchies will also be there and able to
impart to the soul what is necessary.

Now it is a fact that having passed through the phase of
development leading to the present cycle of evolution, the human
being, with his whole soul, has been prepared to contact on Earth the
kind of anthroposophical life that is possible only while he is
incarnated in a physical body. Men are predestined for this and if
they fail they will be unable to establish relationship with any of
the spiritual Beings who might have been their teachers. One cannot
simply die and then, after death, find a teacher who might take the
place of what here, during physical life on Earth, can come to souls
in the form of Anthroposophy. We need not, however, be dejected by
the fact that many individuals reject Anthroposophy and it is
therefore to be assumed that they will not be able to acquire it
between death and the new birth. We need not despair about them for
they will be born in a new earthly life and by that time there will
be a strong enough stimulus towards Anthroposophy and enough
Anthroposophy on the Earth for them to acquire it. In the present age
despondency is still out of place, but that should not lead anyone to
say: I can acquire Anthroposophy in my next life and so can do
without it now. No, what has been neglected here cannot be retrieved
later on.

When our German Theosophical Movement was still very
young I was once giving a lecture about Nietzsche, during which I
said certain things about the spiritual worlds. At that time it was
customary to have discussions and on this occasion someone got up and
said that such matters must always be put to the test of Kant's
philosophy, from which it would be evident that we can have no
knowledge of these things here on Earth and can begin to know them
only after death. That, quite literally, was what the man said. As I
have repeatedly emphasised, it is not the case that one has only to
die in order to acquire certain knowledge. When we pass through the
gate of death we do not experience anything for which we have not
prepared ourselves. Life between death and rebirth is throughout a
continuation of the life here, as the examples already given have
shown. Therefore as individuals we can acquire from the Beings of the
higher Hierarchies only that for which we have prepared ourselves on
Earth — perhaps by having become anthroposophists. Our
connection with the Earth and our passage through the life on Earth
have a significance which nothing else can replace.

A certain form of mediation is, however, possible in
this connection and I have already spoken of it. A person may die and
during his lifetime have had no knowledge at all of Spiritual
Science; but his brother or his wife or a close friend were
anthroposophists. The man who has died may have refused to have
anything to do with Anthroposophy during his life; perhaps he
consistently abused it. Now he has passed through the gate of death
and Anthroposophy can be conveyed to him in some way by other
personalities on Earth. But there must be someone on Earth who passes
on the knowledge to him out of love. Connection with the Earth must
be maintained. This is the basis of what I have called ‘reading
to the dead’. We can render them great benefit even if
previously they would listen to nothing about the spiritual world. We
can help them either by putting what we have to say into the form of
thoughts, conveying knowledge in this way, or we may take an
anthroposophical book, visualise the personality concerned, and read
to him from it; then he will learn. We have had a number of striking
and beautiful examples in our Movement of how it has been possible in
this way to benefit the dead. Many of our friends read to those who
have died. I recently had an experience that others too may have had.
Someone asked me about a friend who had died very recently and it
seemed that he was trying to make himself noticed by means of all
kinds of signs, especially at night, creating disturbance in the
room, rapping and so on. Such happenings are often indications that
the dead person wants something; and in this case it was quite
evident. In his lifetime the man had been very erudite but had always
rejected any knowledge of the spiritual world that might come his
way. It became obvious that he would greatly benefit if a particular
Lecture Course containing the subject-matter for which he was
craving, were read to him. In this way very effective help can be
given beyond death for something left undone on
Earth.

The fact that can convince us of the great and
significant mission of Anthroposophy is that Anthroposophy can bridge
the gulf between the living and the dead, that when human beings die
they have not really gone away from us but we remain connected with
them and can be active on their behalf. If it is asked whether one
can always know whether the dead soul also hears us, it must be said
that those who do what has been described with genuine devotion will
eventually become aware from the way in which the thoughts which they
are sending to the dead live in their own souls that the dead person
is hovering around them. But this is an experience, a feeling, of
which sensitive souls alone are capable. The most distressing aspect
is when something that might be a great service of love is not
heeded; in that case it has been done unnecessarily for the person
concerned, but it may still have some effect in the general pattern
of worlds. In any case one should not grieve excessively about such
lack of success. After all, it happens even here that something is
read to people who do not listen!

These things may well give a true conception of the
seriousness and worth of Anthroposophy. But it must constantly be
emphasised that the conditions of our life in the spiritual world
after death will depend entirely upon the manner of our life here on
Earth. Even our community with others in the spiritual world depends
upon the nature of the relationship we sought to establish with them
here. If there has been no relationship with a human being here on
Earth it cannot be taken for granted that any connection can be
established in the other world between death and rebirth. The
possibility of being led to him in the spiritual world is as a rule
dependent upon the contact established here on Earth — not
necessarily in the last incarnation only but in earlier lives as
well.

In
short, both objective and personal relationships established here on
Earth are the decisive factor for the life between death and the new
birth. Exceptions do occur but must be recognised as such. What I
said here at Christmastime (in Lecture Five) about the Buddha and his
present mission on Mars is one such exception. There are numbers of
human souls on the Earth who were able to contact the Buddha —
even in his previous existence as Bodhisattva — as a result of
inspirations received from the Mysteries. But because the Buddha was
incarnated for the last time as the son of Suddodana, then worked in
his etheric body as I have described [See Lectures Three, Five and
Six of the course,
The Gospel of St. Luke]
and has now
transferred his sphere of activity to Mars, at the present time the
possibility exists that even if we never previously came in contact
with the Buddha, we can establish a relationship with him in the life
between death and rebirth; and we can then bring the results of that
contact with us into the next incarnation on Earth. But that remains
an exceptional case. The general rule is that after death we find
those individuals with whom we had actual contacts here on Earth and
continue these relationships in that other state of existence.

What has now been said is closely related to the
information given during this Winter about the life between death and
the new birth, and the aim has been to show that if Anthroposophy
remains simply a matter of theory and external science, it is only
half of what it ought to be; it fulfils its true function only when
it streams through souls as a veritable elixir of life and enables
these souls to experience in depth the feelings that arise in a human
being when he acquires some knowledge of the higher worlds. Death
then ceases to appear as a destroyer of human and personal
relationships. The gulf between life here on Earth and the life after
death is bridged and many activities carried out with this in mind
will develop. The dead will send their influences into life, the
living their influences into the realm of the dead.

My
wish is that your souls will feel more deeply that life is enriched,
becomes fuller and more spiritual when everything is influenced by
Anthroposophy. Only those who feel this have the right attitude to
Anthroposophy. What is of prime importance is not the knowledge that
man consists of physical body, etheric body, astral body and Ego,
that he passes through many incarnations, that the Earth too has
passed through the several incarnations of Old Saturn, Old Sun and
Old Moon, and so forth. The most important and essential need is to
allow Anthroposophy to transform our lives in a way commensurate with
the Earth's future. This feeling can never be experienced too deeply,
nor can we bestir ourselves too often in this connection. The
feelings we bear with us from these meetings and then move through
life under the stimulus of the knowledge of the super-sensible worlds
acquired here — these feelings are the really important element
in anthroposophical life. Merely to have knowledge of Anthroposophy
is not enough; knowledge and feeling must be combined. We must
realise, however, how false it is to believe that without any
understanding of the world we can do it justice.
Leonardo da Vinci's saying is true: “Great love is the daughter
of great understanding.” He who is not prepared to understand will
not learn how to love.

It is in this sense that Anthroposophy should find entry
into our souls, in order that from this influence which proceeds from
our own being a stream of spirituality may find its way into
Earth-evolution, creating harmony between spirit and matter. Life on
the Earth will, it is true, continue to be materialistic —
indeed outer life will become increasingly so — but as man
moves over the Earth he will bear within his soul the realisation of
his connection with the higher worlds. Outwardly, earthly life will
become more and more materialistic — that is the Earth's karma
— but in the same measure, if Earth-evolution is to reach its
goal, souls must become inwardly more and more spiritual. My purpose
today was to make a small contribution towards understanding this
task.